Epifire

Well that's okay, I just figured since I had some height maps handy I'd put the question out there. Switching topics (again xD) I have another one. After running some tests I found out that Vertex Paints work marvelous when using Lightwave 2015 that is... I would love to be able to spare the cash right now to use it, but I can't justify dishing out that much just to paint in my materials. So that leaves me trying to find a demo (modtools) version to do my bidding. It's a shame all I want it for is a simple Vertex Paint, but it does exactly what I need. That being said, does anybody know of any backwater (old) copies out there available? Even if it's something much cheaper to purchase outright I'd consider, since all I really want to do is this final paint step. I know we have quite a few people here who've used it for a long time, so I figured it was worth a shot!

Doing up some rather large scale level textures to go into this new level and I gotta ask... does id4 support parallax effects of any kind? I have some good heightmaps to use (if it does) but I don't recall it being talked about. My brick wall I'm working on would make great usage of that if it exists in the system.

Some interesting reading Vanished one. Though sadly I can't get any of the links for the tool to work. But as I can see id4 can import huge texture resolutions correct? If so I may do some smaller (slightly less mega) textures for unique building sections. I think I may try to demo some of these themes into my new level I have in mind. Let's just say to start with I'll need to create a lot of stonework and structural details from scratch. The theory is extensive so I'm not sure how well this will work but I have to try. The goal is to create mesh sections as I always do, highpoly with lowres baked finals. 1: The repetitive pieces shall be created from modular assets, then positioned in XSI to their respective places and all saved with their unique world positions for a final export scene. Then I'll load each connected space (within reason as there's a considerable performance hit) into Substance Painter. There I'll work my magic and do all the detailing I need. 2: Once finished with all the required sections I will then export (with as large and compact sections as possible in separate maps) depending on the size of the space I will do for TDM. Here's the tricky part. If my tools are exact enough I'll go back into the final versions of each level section in XSI and move the whole UV sheet to only take up a portion of the final sheet. For instance if I have four 8k textures, I would therefore split the UV space into fourths. Each mesh section would occupy one of the four sections. 3: The last step would be to combine my four texture sheets into a single 16k image in Photoshop. Not sure what a 16k DDS texture would look like but any kind of file compression would probably help this instance immensely for file sizes. For a whole unified level structure I think it can work, permitting the engine can load larger textures with no problems. Now for my current project I may only section out floors for this usage and try to keep the rest as individual assets. This is largely due in part to my lack in tools to batch process/bake my whole level into a single sheet.

Some interesting reading Vanished one. Though sadly I can't get any of the links for the tool to work. But as I can see id4 can import huge texture resolutions correct? If so I may do some smaller (slightly less mega) textures for unique building sections. I think I may try to demo some of these themes into my new level I have in mind. Let's just say to start with I'll need to create a lot of stonework and structural details from scratch. The theory is extensive so I'm not sure how well this will work but I have to try. The goal is to create mesh sections as I always do, highpoly with lowres baked finals. 1: The repetitive pieces shall be created from modular assets, then positioned in XSI to their respective places and all saved with their unique world positions for a final export scene. Then I'll load each connected space (within reason as there's a considerable performance hit) into Substance Painter. There I'll work my magic and do all the detailing I need. 2: Once finished with all the required sections I will then export (with as large and compact sections as possible in separate maps) depending on the size of the space I will do for TDM. Here's the tricky part. If my tools are exact enough I'll go back into the final versions of each level section in XSI and move the whole UV sheet to only take up a portion of the final sheet. For instance if I have four 8k textures, I would therefore split the UV space into fourths. Each mesh section would occupy one of the four sections. 3: The last step would be to combine my four texture sheets into a single 16k image in Photoshop. Not sure what a 16k DDS texture would look like but any kind of file compression would probably help this instance immensely for file sizes. For a whole unified level structure I think it can work, permitting the engine can load larger textures with no problems. Now for my current project I may only section out floors for this usage and try to keep the rest as individual assets. This is largely due in part to my lack in tools to batch process/bake my whole level into a single sheet.

Just from what I see it seems rather out there even for a mod. But I'm actually really skeptical of mods basing themselves as a sequel. Part of me really understands where Valve is coming from but I can't help but feel the pain from either a fan or developer's perspective. The main vibes I get is that they've been waiting on developing new tech to base it on. But also are on the fence about a it altogether. The thing is most people expect something more grand than even Valve can pull off and as I see it, they dug this hole themselves. Even if a sequel wasn't received as well, I just want to see them roll with the Half-Life universe and start pumping out some more games. I'm not near as hard to please as long as it's good content. In all honesty I just want to see a new HL game from it's parent company, with all the care and devotion of the original titles. Least to say it's touching to see a fan runner up, so I guess I'd wait to see what people say about it.

This brings up a lot of different points. What I think of in reference of what I want to do is what you have in the Unreal for Vertex Paints. Pretty awesome results, but I know we're much more limited in what we can do. I think what I'll try to do is take it back a bit and not over-complicate my methods. Can achieve some pretty good results with some more strict methods but fleshing all this out has done me a lot of good to think on. The thing is I'm considering some pretty over the top ideas along the lines of the mega texture theory. Can you make a terrain mesh and have it use a single mega texture only? I don't know how that is implemented within id4 (but some have been saying it's possible). I'm not fully convinced of using it but I'm interested in using smaller (less mega) texture sizes for smaller but intricate outdoor scenes. The production of such a texture would be the interesting part, as I don't think I have any software exactly suited for the job currently.

  Yeah the Vertex Blending relies on color paints directly on the mesh rather than an actual image sadly. At least within Id4 anyway. This is pretty much what your mesh looks like before export (seen in vertex paint mode)...     Heightmap info is the most helpful for what I'm trying to accomplish. This is easier to process (in theory anyway) as we're not relying on select RGB channels as most painting methods utilize in modern engines. Instead with the black and white coverage we control the blending. Both the Vertex Paints and Height map use black and white. The Vertex Paints shouldn't see any change in my process. Alright, so note in my example the dirt path surrounded by grass...     The dirt is within my InvertedVertexColor block. So that part of the mesh is painted black. The downside is that there is only linear blending at the geometry edge loops. The second step I want to do is assign the B&W height map as a last step on top of the vertex blend. So then the white would contribute to the coverage in the black painted areas giving a refined edge based off your heightmap info. What I'm trying to customize is the B&W coverage down to the pixel rather than a Vertex Color. It would be very precise and since I make sure the tiling all lines up, so would the heightmaps.   I may make a visual example to define this further as it's difficult to explain the power it gives the designer. Here's an instance I could use with this. If I had a stone floor that was supposed to have loose tiles. I could blend a different dirt texture in between the tiles. Now this could also be done with a duplicate texture with a different color of dirt in between, but it's still more restrictive. I could pair several tiling dirt textures for most my needs rather than having similar alternate tile floors with the desired dirt in between the tiles.       This may be just the break I need, as that's exactly what I need to accomplish. I'll have to save that and try to use it when I get back to my desktop.

Yeah the other method of mapping out high/low areas means a lot more polygon supports layed in to make the terrain more dense. Now this still isn't really a problem as the terrain wont be needed to cast shadows. Not for the major low lying portions anyway. All I know is if our coders (or other well todo knowledge goers) somehow found me a way of combining heightmap influence on top of vertex painted areas, I could transform how terrain currently looks in TDM. Megatextures would be beastly, but I really would only combine actual terrain elements rather than the rest of the environment. The other thing too is last time I tried to load a Megatexture (in id5's editor) it took me over twenty minuets to load a single map. Not to mention how difficult it was to run after that even (and my hardware isn't too shabby). Sadly I don't think our technology will catch up to Megatextures for at least another five years. Right now we're really only seeing an entry level usage of it and not even it's full potential. To build on that platform of tech and do well, you have to have the elite of the elite hardware to pull it off. So for now I'm still stuck with my different blending methods for multiple textures, to break up noticeable tiling.

Been up for a while going over this. I don't have my actual material here but this should still suffice. What I'm wanting to do (and kinda talked at this) is to use a height map combined as color contribution to the vertex blend. Basically a two step operation with the height map added last. { blend diffusemap map file/path/image_d.tga VertexColor } I know you can use multiple paths in a single blend diffusemap block but it doesn't accomplish what I'm going for. Other blend modes just layer it over the existing effects present. As I'm trying to target the VertexColor directly with a heightmap. Might be possible, might not?

Man this looks great. I'd love to hear a detailed bit on how you're getting these results. I could use something like this for some effects for my rooftop charger mast. Much better! You are your own judge of what you've got in your head to go for the design. Add as much density to the highpoly as you need to smooth out the normals. On the occasion you may actually want to do the opposite for a sharp edge. So what I do in that situation is split edges (or by XSI terminology disconnect polys). If you break up the mesh you can control the hard edge factor that way. I used to rely solely upon smoothing deformers (or turbo-smoothing) to get quick previews, which is good. But it can also be limiting as to what you can do for manipulating the final highres mesh. But yeah now the big thing is to make sure your cage mesh (lowpoly game version) will look like. It needs to conform to the highres shape as closely as possible. This should be very easy as you have a simple shape. Often for most of my technological works I have to blow the mesh up many many times to get rid of baking artifacts. That only happens when you have reference faces (low resolution areas) that have their bake radius intersecting with other highres portions. The bake radius (or rays so to speak) fire directly along the lowres normals in towards the mesh. The radius basically just tells how far out from the mesh surface will be taken into account for the bake. So in tight corners you can get bake rays clipping through the corners. If the corner is an acute angle that is. If it's obtuse, even by a hair then the rays wont project into highres geometry. It's an annoying thing to get around but when you model complex meshes a lot it eventually becomes standard to think that part through.

Well done on the creases! Only thing I'd do at this point (if you plan on baking it) is to get a fairly dense lowres mesh over that and maybe put some smoothing on your highres reference you've been working on. By smoothing I mean subdivision refinement. You may have to add some various edge loops so that you don't lose the good shapes going on here. But it'll make for some smooth'n snazzy normals when you're done. I'm a boss with baking in XSI but I don't know precisely how that's done in Blender (assuming that's what you're using?).

Yeah man, having previously picked out textures to blend helps a lot, but that would be easy to help out with. Trick that I use is to export any and everything that I can from DR to denote area bounding. Now it's only brushwork, but surrounding rocks and paths (and other stuffs that stick into the ground) with brushwork, make for a very detailed BSP to work from. The tricky thing is how you light it. I could toss something together for you very quickly with the right resources to go off of. It's very helpful if you establish boundaries early on. So as you know where you're sky light based entities can cover. When you get your area planned out and ready, pass me a PM and we'll git down to business.

Well screw trying to mess with flares then, that seems to accomplish the effect I need just fine. Thank you for digging that up! I'm pretty lousy at navigating the pk4s to find stuffs, so I'm rather in the debt of those who can find me valuable information. Now if you ever need a special detail asset for a map, just tell this kid...

I like the shape a lot. If anything I'd just thicken the middle of the blade a little bit. The hilt looks perfect imo. To be more specific my thoughts would be to have it widen right at that sharp curve and then taper off to the end. All while keeping the same overall shape. Also if you want any advice or aid with the texturing feel free to hit me up via PMs.

Oh the player lantern (the one you see for the lantern entity to pickup). I don't think most mappers use that one as it's usually assigned through the mission loadout.

Oh geez, they really need to term that better. It's reasons like this, why I absolutely despise the way the info site was written. The weird thing is I've thrown any kind of geometry at it that I can think of to figure out what this deform flare likes. I'm not logged onto my main desktop right now so I can't take a look at what the console is saying yet. I'd be interested in seeing how the lantern is setup in both mesh and materials. I couldn't find where that stays in the directories though. I know it uses a light amount of flare on it and that's what I want to shoot for.

Kinda just moving the topic of deform flares from the, "what are you working on thread" to here. With Vanished One's material reference I'm able to apply that on a model but the results in-game are confusing. So first the id dev resources say that flares need to utilize quads, but I get an in-game error about it not being triangulated and none of the rest of the mesh renders because of it. Just in general quads wont render at all as far as my tests can gather. But just as well if I run this material on the same patch and have it triangulated I get a non-stop error loop in the console. I guess I'm a little in the dark of how the mesh is supposed to be handled in this instance then?

If you were getting kinda creative with Thieves, you could have a round spinning table for knife throwing. Like those ones that have something or someone tied to it? A bit more grand for what you were thinking maybe, but it could be a fun bit of details for a good laugh.

Primarily I wanted to customize one of the existing glass_warp materials. It needs a bit less translucency and a bit more ambient color to define the shape for the off mode. The on state needs to be able to show the internal arc detail when close and have a kind of yellow glow to the shape. Doesn't the lantern use the deform flare? I was hoping to just reduce the rings back to quads to try that and see. If it didn't have any major impact on performance, that would be perfect for what I need then. A material example is really all I'd need to attempt that with, as I really couldn't find any sufficient usage of it on the idSdk site. You may like what I have in mind coming up. I don't exactly have a full take on a mission to put it into yet, but there's a certain scene I want to script and model out. Without putting out too many details, it'll make great use of sounds and visuals for what I'm currently capable of doing

Two days back I realized I wanted a control system for mappers to use, so I kinda did a thing... The shadow mesh has been optimized and the only thing I'd like to change is to get the glow deformer on the bulb rings. The internal arc loses visibility through the glass warp at a distance. I'm curious as to what other glass shaders are available? I like how this one looks otherwise, I'd just like the bulbs to have a bit of a outline in the final result. The unit consists of four meshes total. The main junction box, and three separate lever/bulb sections for starters. These separate meshes share the same origin as the junction box. So basically all you have to do is position the box, then duplicate it and switch to the desired mesh slot you need the lever to sit in. There's a fourth separate lever mesh to parent to a mover entity, as the actual switch. So with that and on/off skins, it should have everything a mapper needs to add in their own switches for in-game purposes. Also! Unlike the arc transformer, this one has a back panel and isn't limited to being placed against a wall.

I kinda wanna make a fairly expansive outdoor scene to test this in now. The only other thing I wish we could utilize is parallax shaders. That would be extremely handy for extra terrain depth, but I have some other ideas that may help handle that. What's really awesome about this method is that there are really no harsh UV seams anywhere. Like as long as you setup your tiling to really match the playable space, you can also bend and warp the terrain a bit to fit even more. For instance, you could easily setup a brick path and blend it to a thin dirt line. Then you'd use another material that blends from dirt to grass. So theoretically there's no limit to the blending as long as you have additional materials to separate each planned area. There's noticeable tiling as we see, so another one we could use is a separate grass to weeds/shrub (whichever) and intersperse them in patches. One that really intrigues me is being able to not have bland transitions from separate models, such as rocks. I could make patches of rocks, posts, walls or fences that have neatly minded transitions. So instead of props simply clipping into terrain we could see them as something that actually looks like it belongs in the environment.

Well this was worth the bump I think because the results are really promising. I'm not really sure what I did but the big thing is you gotta make sure there's a large light covering the whole thing. Cool thing is there's a red point light showing up fine here too! You can also see that white sheen I was talking about mid way through the path/terrain in the shot below... Now this is an extremely simple setup but I have some really solid ideas on how to. "link" textures together to blend multiple materials on a single mesh. Because as long as the primary texture (white painted) is the same, you can swap the secondary and blend nearly anything as long as you give yourself a boarder to blend your primary textures in first. Dug up an old tutorial on this matter as well that may help others with the initial setup of a terrain mesh... http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/vertex-texture-blending-applied-to-models.php Also on a different (more advanced note) I'm beginning to wonder if we can use opacity masks to further condense what areas are shown for the secondary blend. If and this is a big if, we could then use heightmaps to customize where secondary blends occur. Therefore forcing our texture blend to high or low areas. The possibilities, I r excited!

Maybe a bit of tweaking (and maybe a radial glass warp?) for the spotlight. Looks best against blues or whites as I'm trying to de-saturate my stuff more since I realize TDM has a lot of red and yellow lighting. So far I'm content with the color scheme though, what do you guys think?